


Submerged

by JazzRaft



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Romantic Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-11-03 02:01:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10957350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: Above him was the undulating night sky; below him was the bioluminescence of the deep lake’s tenants; and beside him was Nyx, bathed in pale blue and silver and so much like a god...





	Submerged

“Take a deep breath.”

Noctis gripped his hand tight and did as he was told, despite how hard it was to catch his breath when Nyx looked at him like that. When his eyes shimmered like sheltered cobwebs caught in the rain, and his smile was as soft as a kiss, even when it wasn’t touching his lips. He stood so tall and so strong, with the moonlight dusting his scars and the night painting his inked skin. A beautiful thief in the dark, stealing the breath from Noctis’s chest.

He took it back just before they jumped. Stone underfoot, then the whistle of air in his ears and the whooping, wanton laughter of his love, falling beside him.

And then, the endless blue.

It swallowed them whole and held Noctis close, the wild waters as gentle and intimate as the lover held in his hand. Above him was the undulating night sky; below him was the bioluminescence of the deep lake’s tenants; and beside him was Nyx, bathed in pale blue and silver and so much like a god Noctis would beg to recite psalms for.

Nyx tugged on his arm and swam them to the surface. Noctis gasped for the air that Nyx’s eyes didn’t siphon away when they broke through. And when his kindest of captors let him breathe again, Noctis laughed. And then, kept laughing. Until he couldn’t hear the night-sounds anymore. Until he forgot that he was twenty years old, and felt like he was six, again, instead; the first time he’d ever done a cannonball and felt like he was flying.

“Did I break you?” Nyx chuckled, shaking his hair out before smoothing his hands back through it. “You know that phrase ‘die from laughter?’ It draws from fact. Better be careful.”

“Shut up,” Noctis gasped around his bubbling breaths.

He hadn’t felt like this in so damn long. He hadn’t jumped, just for the sake of jumping, into a safe surface for a very long time. It had always been to warp somewhere; always been to meet a goal or cleave through an enemy. Even on the days where he just flew through Insomnia because he had to _get away_ from the Citadel, warping hadn’t been the escape he’d been craving. There was always a danger to it. He could get so deep in the trap of its euphoric adrenaline that it just might kill him. He couldn’t let himself get lost in it, lest he seize, mid-warp, and plummet between the skyscrapers. Where there was no safe landing at the bottom of the city.

He hadn’t fallen like _that_ – reckless and laughing – since he was child. Since the sweeter, summer days in the private pool. The few rare days where he could remember the sound of his father’s laugh, praising him from the edge of the water. Days where everything was so much simpler. Where everything was as clear as the chlorine water and as clean as the blue tiles.

He didn’t know what to call that feeling when he was a kid: the thrill of falling and the comfort of knowing it wouldn’t hurt you. Here, in the corner of Duscae – hidden in the dense green groves, cradled between earth and sky, with Nyx’s soft-rough hand gliding along his arm – Noctis knew the name for that feeling he’d coveted as a child.

It was freedom. And he’d lost it for a very long time. Until Nyx found him, and found all the lost lusts that expectation had stolen away from Noctis to fit into his ragged edges.

Nyx caught his laughter between his teeth, chasing the breath from him until Noctis was rendered voiceless, and they tumbled back underwater. And everything was blue. Quiet. Untouched by the conquests of man. Deep, rock walls, fostering algae curtains that glowed a soft, night blue. Tiny, glowing barrelfish skittered along the edges, peering between submerged weeds. Noctis wished he could beckon to them. Tell them that there was nothing to be afraid of.

Because Nyx was there.

And Nyx was perfect. Too perfect to belong with Noctis. Too beautiful to walk between the filthy, war-ravaged streets of Eos. Too good to be used as a pawn of battle. But too wild not to lounge in the fight. Too sharp not to pierce through the dark things that hurt all of their light. Too much of a hero to let the bitter ghosts of long-dead tyrants destroy him.

Noctis reached through the water to touch the scars his cruel ancestors had burned him with. He watched Nyx’s silvery-blue stare shifting in the undercurrent, but always falling back on him. Always finding him. Even when Noctis didn’t know how to find himself.

Nyx smiled at him, skin the color of an indigo night in the underwater gloom. Hair splayed like ashen ink in the currents. Noctis floated towards him, fingers buoying over scars he wished he could take back. And he kissed him, careful and cushioned by the sweet blue shade of peace and quiet all around them.

And it was all simple again. He was free again. They were hidden from the whole world. The water expected nothing from either of them. The dark let them be, invited them into the midnight like old friends.

Nyx’s hand bumped his neck. When Noctis opened his eyes, Nyx was smiling and craned his head up towards the surface. It reminded Noctis that the thunder in his chest was from a more mortal effect than the transcendent feeling of Nyx’s kiss. He followed him back to the world again, gulping in air when he got there. He cleared away the hair plastered over his eyes, just in time to blink them open and catch Nyx’s mouth back on his again.

His lips slipped effortlessly against his, playfully sucking on the droplets of water clinging to each crease. Noctis smiled between each break and breath, shift and slide, arms as liquid as the water as he draped them around Nyx’s shoulders. Crickets sang in the reeds on the shore, frogs croaked in the shallows, and the water lapped in lazy whispers around them as Nyx swum them both to the crop of stone cradling this small cerulean paradise.

Noctis’s back touched cool rock, then leaned into a warm hand as Nyx pressed gently along the scar. Always so careful not to hurt him. Always so attentive, so sweet, so safe. Noctis could drown here with him. Sink down to the bottom with the glowfish and his gilded god. Forget the cracked clay earth and the cold metal bodies that hunted them across it. Forsake the callous gods overhead. Because their heaven could never surpass _this._

“I love you,” he breathed with the stolen air Nyx shared with him.

His hands wove through wet hair, lips drank from the water captured on his, and his skin slipped like mercury over glass as he touched him. He didn’t need to say the words. They were so far beyond that. And they never felt like enough. But they were true. And here, he was free. And with that freedom, he just wanted to say it. Over and over again. Until it was a worthy prayer to this Astral shaped like a man. Until he blessed him with his breath in the night.

“I know,” Nyx said, smile glistening blue and sloping over his own. “I love you.”

He loved him through the deep blue night, spilled his prayers through the depths drinking them in, until the water bubbled hot around them and his prayers became Nyx’s prayers, too. Until Noctis was made into a god like him, in water and night and the deep blue glow.


End file.
